


Gnarled

by KretinaDivina



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Community: got_exchange, F/M, sadfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2019-02-04 14:51:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12773373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KretinaDivina/pseuds/KretinaDivina
Summary: A brief study of Rhaella Targaryen.





	Gnarled

**Author's Note:**

  * For [coconutshrimp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coconutshrimp/gifts).



> It has been a while since I wrote any ASOIAF fic. I really hope you enjoy!

_There had been a time._

_A time when she’d believed in the stories she and Aerys were both drawn to as babes._

_A time when she thought love was real.  More real than her fear of her gnarled family tree._

 

She waited by the gate whenever she could break away, and she hoped he’d ride by, slowing his mount as much as he dared to catch a glimpse of his queen of love and beauty.  Some other knights, she knew, got to see their queens of love and beauty out in the open air whenever the opportunity struck.  A lucky few even got to marry theirs.  Rhaella had never heard tale nor song of knights whose queens were really princesses who were to go and marry their brothers while the knights were left purposeless. 

Each time their eyes made contact through the spaces between the gaps in the bars of this side-entrance to Summerhall and its grounds, Rhaella feared he’d find her monstrous and would never ride by again.  Every night, her Valyrian skin looked paler and her thin lips seemed to press together tighter by the day.  She was growing taller, too, taller and older.  It was a sad way for a girl to look.  She wished she’d dare run away with him.  That sort of thing was in songs all the time.

*

Rhaella had been bold and brave, once.  During those brief months when she wished and wished and wished, oh!—there had been that one afternoon when they’d kissed and kissed until Rhaella gripped his wrists rougher than anyone might expect from a maiden so fair and placed his hands upon her breasts.

“By the Seven,” she said, speaking to him as though she were the elder of the two, “you can touch me—I’m not made of scales.”

And how he’d touched her and touched her, pawing at the front of her shift and listening to her soft whines. 

 

_There had been a time._

_A time when she’d believed in hoping._

_For family and fortune.  For the strength to do her duties._

_There had been a time…_

 

Rhaegar was perfect.  So Aerys said.  And Aerys said and said and said.  Aerys could not stop talking about the babe.

“Look, look,” he’d say, tearing Rhaegar from Rhaella’s arms with no care for whether he might have been sleeping.  “Look at my son,” he’d say, his indigo eyes gleaming in a way unlike any other man in the room.  And he’d thrust Rhaegar into the arms of whichever lords and ladies were visiting the Red Keep.  “Look at my son.  He’s perfect.  Already has a full head of silver hair, look…”

And Rhaella would bristle, her skin prickling with rage.  His son?  His?  As though Aerys had been the one crying out on the damp grass, birthing Rhaegar right then and there with the scent of burning filling his lungs.  As if the scent that she had to breathe while bearing down and pushing, pushing, pushing hadn’t been their family’s human flesh, burning in the way dragons ought not.

Rhaella wished for the dragon Aerys always said he had inside.  She wished for it to rear up, frightful and black in her chest, and shoot flames from her mouth.  Then Aerys would know.  Then Aerys would stop, and beckon her to him, and beam with pride at their little family.

“Oh yes, his hair, and his eyes, look at his eyes…He’s far better-looking than his mother already, isn’t he, my lords?”  And Aerys would laugh.  And Aerys would laugh and laugh and laugh.  And he wouldn’t stop.

*

But Rhaegar wasn’t perfect.  Fair to look upon, and full of ideas and musical talent, yes.

But that alone did not a human make.

When Rhaella saw her son she felt fear.  The family tree was gnarled, gnarled and withered and rotting away.  And Rhaegar had obsessions.  She saw the ghosts of the family history in his eyes sometimes; she’d walk by his practice-room and hear him reciting the names of Targaryen rulers past over the ominous torrent of notes from the harp.

Rhaella wanted nothing more than to slip into the sept and pray to the Mother.  But when she managed to sneak away, she felt nothing.

*

Rhaella tried to do her duty.  For seventeen years she tried. 

Her body failed her.  What was inside her?  Not a dragon, certainly nothing human, for human women could keep children in their womb for the nine months they needed, and human women’s children were made of strong enough stuff to survive their first year alive.

What was she, then, and who was she, then?  Nothing and no one but a gnarled stump, burnt like their ancestral Summerhall, stunted by her sickened roots.  Maybe the illness inside her brother was inside her too, but in her womb instead of her mind.

Aerys had cursed her, thinking her lost children proof she’d been unfaithful.  And then Aerys blamed little Jaehaerys’s wet nurse.  And then Aerys blamed himself.

Rhaella wished she’d been unfaithful.  She wished the poor girl had killed her son.  She wished it had been Aerys’s mistresses who’d cursed him with bad seed and bad fortune.

She wished for anything but the truth she feared—that inside, she was rotted like her brother.  Inside, she was worthless. 

 

_There had been a time…_

_She’d had more than enough time.  She’d had time to be a good sister, a good wife.  Time to do her duty._

_And she had.  She’d done all she could.  There was Rhaegar.  The eight that didn’t live or ever come to be.  Then curious little Viserys, some joy after so long.  And now, the one that grew inside her.  A beautiful, healthy girl.  Rhaella was sure of it._

_And all she’d wished for and hoped for was done.  Things of the past, like her summer afternoons watching Bonifer on his mount.  Nothing more than a story like the ones she and Aerys had believed in as babes._

_Dragons were real, now.  The only things that were real._

 

Rhaella had once thought herself ugly.  Pale and spindly, her Targaryen eyes a less arresting shade than her brother’s.   Too tall, with hips just a bit too wide and tits just a bit too small.

When thinking about it she’d laugh out loud, laugh bitterly.  It was an old woman’s laugh.  The laugh of someone whose body was a map of where the dragons were.  The laugh of someone who could never be mistaken for a pretty young maid, not even in candlelight.

If Ser Bonifer were even still alive, what would he think of her now?  Would he think of her?

When she saw the shell of her brother, heard Rhaegar's rambling plans and tales of prophecies, she imagined the bark on the Targaryen tree crumbling, crumbling, and blowing away in the wind that sometimes whipped through King's Landing all the way from the Sunset Sea.

And if that bark were to crumble and turn to dust, well, then--so would she.


End file.
